“Make America Great Again.” I’ve often wondered, to what era our president is referring?
The 1950’s springs to mind but back then the US had its highest ever percentage of unionized workers – hardly “greatness” in Mr. Trump’s eyes.
He has been touting the Gilded Age of late: “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913...” What he’s saying is that a wealthy oligarchy lived off the fat of the land, while many Americans subsisted in relative poverty.
And oh, were there immigrants in the Gilded Age! They streamed in from all over the planet, adding to the many millions who had arrived since the 1840’s.
Who cared for these “great unwashed?” Churches and fraternal organizations did their best, but ultimately labor unions were the beacons of hope for the striving masses.
In most cases Federal and State governments worked hand in glove with the oligarchy.
The 1914 Ludlow, Colorado massacre of mine workers and their families by the state militia and the “Pinkerton goons” hired by John D. Rockefeller is a prime example. The striking miners were merely seeking to exercise their state-mandated right to join a union.
In many ways union leaders and their members were the real heroes of the Gilded Age. Most are forgotten now, no museums or foundations named in their honor.
But the International Workers of the World (IWW), commonly known as the Wobblies, will always be remembered – probably because the US Government perceived the union as an existential threat and set J. Edgar Hoover, a 22 year old ex-librarian, to destroy it.
The IWW was formed in 1905 by Big Bill Haywood, James Connolly, and Mother Jones among others and continues to this day, although in a much diminished form.
Their mantra and aim was OBU (One Big Union). They welcomed all workers including immigrants, African-Americans, women, and Asians and accepted both craft and unskilled wage earners.
They were a thorn in the side of such oligarchs as J.P. Morgan, Henry C. Frick (yep, he of the museum), and the aforementioned Rockefeller.
The IWW’s inclusive approach suited the social and political turmoil of the early 20th Century.
There was a huge floating labor force that could be hired or fired at the whim of employers. This often led to wage cuts amid competition for jobs.
The Wobblies waded into this morass, their union halls sprouted up all over the country. Most halls provided a piano, brass instruments, vats of soup, English lessons and a mailing address for the mostly itinerant workers.
Swedish immigrant and Wobbly diehard, Joe Hill wrote songs of satire about the bosses, and anthems of solidarity for the workers that were sung across the land.
In many localities unions were forbidden to hold public meetings. The Wobblies challenged this denial of a basic right - as soon as one speaker was arrested another would step up on his soapbox, until the jails were packed and the courts clogged. Thus was free speech regained throughout the West.
While imprisoned in Spokane, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn publicized the common practice of jailers hiring out women prisoners as prostitutes and that practice ended.
The Rebel Girl was everywhere in those days; she, Margaret (Higgins) Sanger and Italian anarchist, Carlo Tresca were among the leaders of the successful 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, MA, a hallmark in the battle against rampant child employment in America’s mills and mines.
But the tide turned against them in 1917 with the entry of the US into World War 1 and the ensuing Red Scare.
The Federal Government resented the IWW’s resistance to the military draft and suspected that One Big Union might eventually evolve into a worker’s political party.
Most of the Wobbly leadership was sentenced to long prison sentences under the wartime Espionage Act as repression was unleashed nationally.
With James Connolly having been executed in Ireland, Joe Hill in Salt Lake City, Big Jim Larkin imprisoned in Sing Sing, the Wobblies began to lose their appeal and impact.
With a head for facts and figures and a never ending supply of index cards, J. Edgar Hoover collated law-enforcement information nationwide. This he used to devastating effect in prosecuting the IWW leadership, leaving us with a tantalizing question: Could One Big Union have morphed into an American version of the British Labor Party?
We’ll never know but the legend of the Wobblies lives on.
Rebel Girl, a musical by Larry Kirwan, will receive its first staged readings on Sept. 27 at 2:30pm and 7pm at The Arthur Laurents Theatre, NBPAC, New Brunswick, NJ. Some tickets will be reserved for Irish Echo readers. Contact Tom Marlow at blackfortyseven@aol.com stating preference for which show. Tickets are free but admission by invite only.
